Break Glass In Case Of Speech

In a perfect world, we would always be given plenty of time to prepare for our next speech. However, you and I don’t live in a perfect world and that means that because of the importance of public speaking all too often the opportunity to give a speech will just suddenly show up. My question for you is simple: will you be ready?

Know Your Topic

Since you can never be sure when you’ll be called on to give a speech, or for that matter who your audience will be, you need to make sure that you control the things that you can control. This means that you need to pick a topic that appeals to you.

When you give your back-pocket speech, it’s going to be important that your audience realizes that you really care about your topic. By picking a topic that you both know and care about, it will be easy for your passion to come out.

Take Time To Prepare

This may be the hardest thing to do: prepare to give a speech that nobody has asked you to give for an audience that you don’t know anything about. Yes, I know that this sounds sorta crazy, but you need to practice this speech every so often in order to keep it fresh in your mind.

The one thing that you do need to be careful of is to not over practice your speech. This means that you don’t want to practice it so much that when you deliver it you’ll just slide in to an automatic mode. Your audience will realize that you are on autopilot and they’ll tune you out.

Find Out How To Relax

The last tip for how to be ready to give a back-pocket speech is the hardest to do: learn how to relax. If you have plenty of time to prepare for a speech, generally speaking your level of confidence will grow as you have time to get comfortable with the event, the speech, and your audience. When called on to give a back-pocket speech you won’t have any of these.

What this means is that you are going to have to be able to rely on the prep work that you’ve already done in order to quickly calm yourself down. Knowing that you are ready to give the speech at any time will go a long way to helping you keep your nerves under control. Take the time to create a great speech and to practice it and you’ll be ready when the time finally comes to give it.

What All Of This Means For You

You really don’t have any control over when your next speaking opportunity is going to show up. What this means that that you need to always have a back-pocket speech ready to go so that when called upon, you can step up and deliver a memorable speech – knowing that you have to be ready to do this is one of the benefits of public speaking.

In order to have a speech that will be ready to go when you need it, you must first pick a topic to talk on, and then practice it. Finally, you need to take the time to teach yourself how to relax.

Although you can’t be sure when you’ll be asked to give a speech, you can be assured that you will be asked. What this means is that you need to always be ready. It turns out that it’s not all that hard to do, just take the time to prepare and you’ll be ready when your name gets called!

Note: What we talked about are advanced speaking skills. If you are just starting out I highly recommend joining Toastmasters in order to get the benefits of public speaking. Look for a Toastmasters club to join in your home town by visiting the web site www.Toastmasters.org. Toastmasters is dedicated to helping their members to understand the importance of public speaking by developing listening skills and getting presentation tips. Toastmasters is how I got started speaking and it can help you also!

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

As public speakers, it can be very easy for us to become nervous or upset about our next speech despite our understanding of the importance of public speaking. This can happen at any time, even to experienced speakers. The big question is what can we do about it? It turns out that one solution has been used by actors and actresses to solve this very same problem.